The present invention relates to collecting devices for surgical sponges.
During surgical procedures, absorbent sponges are utilized to absorb body fluids around the site of the surgical incision. The sponges are normally provided in two sizes, a 4-inch by 4-inch smaller sponge, and a 14-inch by 14-inch larger laparotomy sponge. In the past, when the wetted sponges were removed from the patient's body, they have been placed in a kick bucket for retention during the surgical procedure. At the end of the surgical procedure, the sponges were removed from the kick bucket, and were sorted according to size, after which they were counted to assure that no sponges were left in the patient's body. According to convention, the 4-inch by 4-inch sponges were counted in groups of ten, and the 14-inch by 14-inch sponges were counted in groups of five.
It will be apparent that the prior sorting and counting procedure was tedious and time consuming, and could be subject to error during the counting of sponges. A bag strip has been proposed with pockets in U.S. Pat. No. 3,749,237 in an attempt to facilitate this procedure. However, the openings of the pockets in this bag strip are left open, thus permitting possible contamination from the collected sponges through the air to the surgical site.